The thought of getting a new car horrifies me. It chills me to the
bone, and cuts me to said bone's chewy marrow center for reasons I'll
go into shortly. However, my family could use a second car. Our sole
car is currently being spread thin. It's shared by myself, my wife, and
soon by my daughter, who's been counting down the seconds to her
"driving-age" birthday like she's going to sing "Auld Lang Syne" when
midnight strikes.

The struggle for power gets ugly. It's easy to fend off my daughter.
My wife and I tell her that she can't practice without a permit, even
though we know she sneaks out of the house in the wee hours to do
donuts in the local strip mall's parking lot. We'd fear for her safety
if we weren't so relieved that her indiscretion frees up the car for us
during precious daylight hours. It's a different story between Ann and
I. We used to simply ask each other to use the car to go to work in the
morning. Whoever would ask first would get it.

Sometimes I slash one, possibly two tires at night. After my wife
reluctantly hops on the bus, I dip into my secret stash of tires I keep
up in the attic. It's an expensive trick, but it guarantees me one more
day of vehicular freedom. She's bound to catch on soon, but until then
I'll have two thousand dollars a week allotted in my budget for the
good people at GoodYear.

So given this information, you'd believe that from a practical point
of view it makes good sense to have a second car, but recent
observations and experiences dictate otherwise. What is troubling me
so? The fact that I live... and drive... in New Jersey.
Many would-be parents ask themselves: "How could I bring a child into
this horrible world?" Well, I've dealt with that question, and I have a
lovely, yet rambunctious daughter. Now I'm faced with a far worse
dilemma: "How can I bring another car into this treacherous driving
state?"

The rumors are true. Everyone here drives like a lunatic, each in
their own maniacal way. There are the passives who go ten miles per
hour under the speed limit in the fast lane and the aggressives who go
thirty above in the slow lane. The latter will cut you off faster than
the modern aristocracy will cut off their pregnant, out-of-wedlock
teens.

Oh the things I've seen... Flecks of foam running out of the snarling
mouths of the drivers behind me, fogging up their own windshields with
the bursts of steam emanating from their ears. I've seen the tense
quivering of their hands about to slam down on their horn in a state of
mind where hitting the brake pedal is secondary to venting their
frustration about the others around them . What happened to these
people to make them this way? Maybe it's in the water. Have you ever
had New Jersey tap water? If you have, you know it's not out of the
question. Were they bitten by a rabid beast? Are they fearless
immortals, aliens, or merely legions of the undead? Perhaps there were
never enough opposable thumbs to go around to use turn signals with. Maybe there was one original bad driver in New Jersey, and
their lack of skill propogated like a virus or like a motorized
Dracula, tainting all that they touch. As you can plainly see, I have
many theories, most of which dip into the realm of fantasy since what I
know to be the true reality is grim and an insurmountable force to
contend with.

The analogies to monsters are not entirely appropriate. There's a
transformation that occurs behind the wheel of a car, but it's a
reflection of the highways and byways, and not necessarily that New
Jersey breeds bad drivers, even though the purely bad drivers are out
there. Driving around the streets of any city in New Jersey will make
you realize this. Whether the system that created these roads is
corrupt, or merely incompetant, I'll never know, but from my
fresh-on-the-scene perspective, Jersey has the feel that it went
through some kind of terrible nuclear holocaust what must have been
decades ago. All of the planners and architects were killed, and some
well-meaning but inexperienced survivors were forced into stepping
forward and taking on the responsibilities of those who passed. They
re-built the decimated roads using their best judgment, but it wasn't
quite right, and the effects linger to this day.

For instance: You frequently can't make left turns or u-turns. If you
want to go someplace on the opposite side of the street, you need to
overshoot your destination, and then make a "reverse jughandle" by
turning right onto a loop. Also, many roads are unmarked and exits are
often indicated after their respective off ramps. You can take your map
and throw it out the window. It;s no good here. As for the on-ramps,
they're barely existent. You have about one car length to decide if
you're going to stay put and await your chance to join the flow of
traffic or gun it and pray you don't wind up in a situation like those
depicted in the highway safety films of yore.

Being exposed to these conditions would undoubtedly rattle even the
coolest of customers, and once you've entered the driving world with
people who've already lost it: it's chaos. You'd think that since the
Department of Transportation is asleep at the wheel so to speak, that
the Department of Motor Vehicle Services would step up to the plate,
but they're just as inept.

Now, DMVs are designed to drive one crazy, but New Jersey's takes the
cake, and then mashes it in your face. First off, where most states
have several full-service office per county, New Jersey has
approximately four, only one of which you can take the mandatory vision
test in. For me it was 20 miles away, in Newark, and I live in the
highly populated New York City metro area! Now I know what it's like to
live in Nebraska. The vision-testing device is incorporated into the
tellers' booths in most other states. I guess the vintage 60's eye exam
machines in Jersey are too pricey to buy in bulk. One day I hope
someone's DMV payment will go towards the purchase of an eye chart that
can simply be posted on a far wall behind the counter.

That's just a minor detail, and the tip of the disorganizational
iceberg. First off: When I got there, there was no indication that the
building which belonged to the street address I looked up was, in fact,
the DMV. A sign saying something to the effect of "DMV" would have been
nice.

Usually at DMVs you take a number and you wait forever. Not in New
Jersey! You don't have to take a number, but you get in line after
line. It's the Platonic ideal of a bureaucracy. These are the lines I
was in on my visit: The line to give in my forms. The line to pay for
the vision test. The line to take my vision test. The line to hand in
my results. The line to pay for my license photo. The line to take my
license photo. The line to pay for my change of title, registration,
and new plates. And finally the line to pick up my change of title,
registration, and new plates. It was like a long day of going on an
amusement park rides without the rides, the park, and certainly not the
amusement.

By the way, if you ever find yourself in a New Jersey DMV, bring your
checkbook. They don't accept credit cards.

So after explaining this in great detail, you could see why I'm
hesitant to accept your offer. Now if you can give me a quote on a
house somewhere safer and saner, including moving costs, I'd be more
than happy to do business with you. For now, I will simply destroy my
wife's keys to my current car, and lock her and my daughter in the
basement. If I didn't have to go out and win bread everyday, I'd be in
there as well.